DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Sunday, September 29, 2013

US Senate would reject House bill as shutdown looms (Reid to shutdown the Government)

US Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has warned that his Democratic-led chamber will reject a House Republican bill to avert a government shutdown.
The Senate passed its own bill to fund government until 15 November - ahead of the 1 October shutdown deadline.
But House Republicans are refusing to support the measure without a provision to remove funding from President Barack Obama's healthcare law.
Agencies are making contingency plans as the two parties remain deadlocked.
In a statement, Senator Reid said that "after weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at square one".
He added that Republican efforts to pass the House bill - that would delay the healthcare law for a year and repeal a tax on medical devices - were pointless.

Ten states where Obamacare wipes out existing health care plans!

President Barack Obama famously promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” He later got even more specific.

“If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said.
But as Obamacare’s rollout approaches, we have learned this is not true. Here are the ten states where consumers may like their health care plans, but they won’t be able to keep them.

1) California:58,000 will lose their plans under Obamacare. The first bomb dropped in California with a mass exodus from the most populated state’s Obamacare exchange. Aetna, the country’s largest insurer, left first in July and was closely followed by UnitedHealth. Anthem Blue Cross pulled out of California’s Obamacare exchange for small businesses as well.
Fifty-four percent of Californians expect to lose their coverage, according to an August poll.2) Missouri: Patients of the state’s largest hospital system — which spans 13 hospitals including the St. Louis Children’s Hospital — willnot be covered by the largest insurer on Obamacare exchanges, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield. Anthem covers 79,000 patients in Missouri who may seek subsidies on Obamacare exchanges, but won’t be able to see any doctors in the BJC HealthCare system.3) Connecticut: Aetna, the third largest insurer in the nation, won’t offer insurance on the Obamacare exchange in its own home state, where it was founded in 1850. The reason? “We believe the modification to the rates filed by Aetna will not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans and meet the service expectations of our customers,” said Aetna spokesman Susan Millerick.4) Maryland:13,000 individuals covered by Aetna and its recently-purchased Coventry Health Care won’t be able to keep their insurance plans if they want Obamacare subsidies on the exchanges. Aetna and Coventry canceled plans to offer insurance in the exchange when state officials wouldn’t allow them to charge premiums high enough to cover costs.5) South Carolina:28,000 people were insured by Medical Mutual of Ohio, SC’s second-largest insurance company, until it decided to leave the state entirely in July due to Obamacare’s “vast and quite complex” new regulations. Company spokesman Ed Byers said Medical Mutual’s patients would be switched over to United Healthcare plans instead.6) New York: Aetna pulled out of New York’s exchange in late August in an effort to keep their plans “financially viable,” said Aetna spokeswoman Cynthia Michener.7) New Jersey: 1.1 million Aetna customers are at risk in New Jersey, where the leading insurer also won’t be a part of the exchange. Just 2,600 patients purchase individual plans with the company, but any looking to take advantage of subsidies on the exchange for unaffordable employer-based insurance won’t be able to do with Aetna.8) Iowa: Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Iowa’s largest health insurer, decided not to offer plans in the Obamacare exchange. It sells 86 percent of Iowa’s individual health insurance plans.9) Wisconsin: Two of the three largest insurers in the state won’t offer plans on the exchange. United Healthcare and Humana patients will have to get a new health insurer to buy insurance on Obamacare exchanges.10) Georgia: Just five insurers are participating in Georgia’s Obamacare exchange. Medical Mutual of Ohio left Georgia and Indiana as well as South Carolina, due to Obamacare regulations. Aetna, along with Coventry, also decided against participating in the George health exchange.

Sarah Palin: Flushing Critters and Retrieving 2014

A simple fact is missing from all the media hysteria and political establishment temper tantrums over Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee’s attempt to defund Obamacare.
Americans are getting slammed by Obamacare right now. Workforces are decimated as health care prices rise. Public opinion is on our side. If now was not the time to unite and fight it, when was? Those who are attacking Cruz and Lee’s efforts have forgotten how negotiations are won.
Use as an example the negotiations a governor of energy-rich Alaska must engage in with powerful multinational oil tycoons. In my experience, I found that the key to achieving success for the people you’re elected to serve is to take a firm position, stand solid, and negotiate from there when the other guy is ready to take you seriously. You fight as hard as you can with whatever small edge you’ve got until the other guy respects you enough to wise up, sit down, and come to a mutually acceptable agreement. You get nothing at all if you preemptively surrender before the battle even commences.
Imagine how much stronger the GOP’s hand would have been if every Republican (and those Democrats who’ve finally admitted Obamacare’s devastating flaws) stood together against cloture in order to prevent Harry Reid from cutting off debate and stripping Obamacare defunding from the bill?
Not only would there have been pressure on red state Democrats up for re-election to join the right cause, there would have been pressure on Reid and the White House to negotiate agreements. Even if the GOP couldn’t have defunded all of Obamacare, they could have negotiated some relief for average Americans who now feel they can do nothing but brace for the coming train wreck. We average Americans know we’ll never get the exemptions and favors Obama gave his political cronies and Congress, but any relief for the middle class would have been welcomed.
But Republicans got nothing from squabbling with each other and denouncing (on and off the record) the brave men who tried to do something.
Ted Cruz and Mike Lee fought to fulfill the campaign promises every Republican made, and their actions have been revelatory for all of us.
Hunters know what flushing dogs do. Cruz and Lee were acting as the grassroots’ flushing dogs. Their actions showed us who was willing to stand up for hard working Americans and who wasn’t. We thank Senators Vitter, Paul, Crapo, Enzi, Fischer, Roberts, Scott, Heller, Grassley, Toomey, Moran, Rubio, Shelby, Risch, Inhofe, Portman, and Sessions for standing with Cruz and Lee.
In 2010, a galvanized grassroots rallied against Obamacare to carry Republicans to victory. But in 2012, many in the grassroots stayed home, and we saw how that turned out for the GOP.
Unfortunately, the message of some politicians today seems to be: “Whoopsie, seems I can’t fulfill my election promises, but vote for me again and I promise to do what I promised last time.”
Sorry, that doesn’t cut it. America, you deserve better. If they can’t do anything with the power you gave them through their elected office, then you deserve someone else to give it a try.
2014 is just around the corner, and we’re ready for it. Support those who do us a favor by flushing out politicians wanting to hide. Retrieving liberty must be the point in all this.

Study: Insurance costs to soar under Obamacare

New research from the Manhattan Institute estimates that insurance rates for young men will rise by 99 percent. Rates for younger women will rise between 55 percent to 62 percent, according to the right-leaning New York think tank.

The precise impact of the new health law is likely to vary markedly from state-to-state, however.

These differences mean men will get hammered in North Carolina with an average 305 percent rate hike, while women will suffer in Nebraska, paying an average of 237 percent more. For most people, subsidies in the law will not counteract the rate shock, says co-author of the study Avik Roy, a health care expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.